Breadcrumb Trail Links

Biba: An app that creates treasure maps and obstacle courses within playgrounds

Author of the article:

Jenny Lee

Publishing date:

August 12, 2016 • 6 minute read

Biba CEO Matt Toner holds his smartphone showing the Biba playground app at Central Park in Burnaby. So far, Biba has been installed in 50 playgrounds in the U.S. and Canada. There are no Biba playgrounds in B.C.Kim Stallknecht/ PNG

Article Sidebar

Share this Story: Biba: An app that creates treasure maps and obstacle courses within playgrounds

Trending

Article content

Matt Toner figured his new smartphone app would help kids get off the couch and into playgrounds, but once Biba launched in January, he discovered his biggest selling point was not at all what he’d anticipated.

It turned out municipal park planners across North America were thirsting for data on playground use — back-end data that Biba could provide as product use gathers momentum.

Biba: An app that creates treasure maps and obstacle courses within playgroundsBack to video

Municipalities and school boards invest large sums on playground equipment but have little information on who uses it, when and how. “It’s such a weird black hole,” said Toner, Biba CEO and a B.C. NDP candidate for Vancouver False Creek in 2013.

“Is it better to create a new playground or replace an old one, or put 10 pieces of equipment in a different playground?” Toner said.

Parents download the free Biba app onto their smartphones to get a suite of scavenger hunts, obstacle courses, treasure maps and other games. The parent holds the phone, the child runs, jumps and plays.

Advertisement

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Article content continued

If a playground is Biba-enabled with six “augmented reality markers,” the six-inch square panels attached to playground equipment function like QR codes to trigger animation, new missions, prizes. For instance, when a parent uses a smartphone camera to scan the marker, virtual baby robots might appear for the child to “collect.”

Biba is partnered with PlayPower, a global playground manufacturer whose brands include Miracle Recreation Equipment, Little Tikes Commercial, Hags Play, and Soft Play. North Carolina-based PlayPower takes care of sales, marketing and distribution while 10-employee Vancouver-based Biba looks after the digital side and receives a fee from PlayPower for each installation.

Advertisement

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Article content continued

So far, Biba has been installed in 50 playgrounds in the U.S. and Canada. There are no Biba playgrounds in B.C.

Biba CEO Matt TonerKim Stallknecht/PNG

While competitors have “nibbled” around integrating digital and physical play, most existing solutions require electricity, a disincentive to PlayPower’s many clients’ in municipal and school settings, PlayPower chief marketing officer Lynne Vandeveer said.

“All of these places are concerned about keeping maintenance costs low. The beautiful thing about Biba is it doesn’t require a Wi-Fi connection or any kind of electricity to be brought to the playground itself. Nothing to break. It uses technology inside every parent’s pocket or purse.”

Advertisement

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Article content continued

To Vandeveer’s surprise, access to data rather than play value has turned out to be the primary reason customers are signing on.

“It helps them make an informed decision about how to invest public funds in an industry that does not have a rich amount of data … Did you say you can actually tell me, (how) the investment I’ve made in this playground equipment is actually being used and how much and how often? Those analytics are the things our customers have really responded to.”

All municipalities lack statistical data on park use due to the cost of gathering data, said Tiina Mack, Vancouver park board manager of park development. Most existing data is observational. The Vancouver park board manages 180 playgrounds, has talked to Biba and similar companies, and will be seeking resident and stakeholder feedback on playground renewal this fall.

Advertisement

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Article content continued

“We see the merit of these apps, but also see our focus is creative play, nature play, open play and un-programmed play,” said Mack, a landscape architect.

Anne Gervais, City of Sudbury (Ontario) recreation coordinator installed a Biba-enabled playground earlier this year and looks forward to data on peak hours, which equipment is used the most and which the least. “We never had the opportunity to gather that kind of data before,” she said. The City of Sudbury manages about 200 playgrounds, each of which costs between $10,000 and $85,000 to install.

To date, Gervais has had to use census material and visit playgrounds herself. “I bring my nieces and nephew. I say, ‘Go play in the splash pad, and we’re going to talk about it.’ I sit there and I watch the parents and kids and which piece of equipment they are using the most.”

Advertisement

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Article content continued

“Parents usually sit on the outskirts playing on their phone anyway,” Gervais said. “Now the parents have to be interactive with the children. They have to get off that bench and the kid has to run out and come back and do the interactive things.”

The data Biba collects is encrypted, anonymized and segmented into large geographic areas and complies with national and U.S. child privacy standards.

“We tried to develop games that are not prescriptive but offer a scenario that would naturally get kids active,” said Nis Bojin, Biba senior product designer. Bojin holds a doctorate in interaction design with a focus on “serious” or educational games.

Advertisement

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Article content continued

In one game, parent and child might create a race course in which the child runs to various pieces of playground equipment, then returns to the parent at which point the phone “becomes” a pit stop.

“If you were a car, what would you need at this moment? Sometimes the phone is the embodiment of a ratchet and tells you what body part to fix — the elbow or neck. You press the button and it vibrates or makes a sound. The three-to-six age bracket, they think that stuff is hilarious,” Bojin said.

A child might blow onto the phone to make an engine fire go out. “We use a microphone threshold algorithm so it knows when someone is blowing on it,” Bojin said. Biba was originally conceived by student intern Ryan Nadel as a school project. Biba turned it into a consumer-ready product.

Advertisement

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Article content continued

“We’re not trying to address those kids who are already out there playing. This is a solution intended for those kids who aren’t,” Bojin said. Only 14 per cent of kids aged five to 11 in Canada are getting the minimum recommended amount of moderate to vigorous physical activity of 60 minutes a day, according to a July 2016 Participaction report, Bojin said.

Playing Biba games generally involves 10 to 20 per cent screen time compared to physical play, Bojin said.

The list price for Biba’s six augmented reality markers is $1,300 U.S. In comparison, a small, free-standing straight slide generally runs $2,250 to $3,350 U.S. The cost to build an entire playground varies widely from $15,000 to a million dollars, Vandeveer said.

Advertisement

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Article content continued

But data is not a key selling point to all municipal customers. The product’s ability to gather data “didn’t play a factor in our decision at all,” said Kim Becker of Henderson Public Works, Parks and Recreation in Nevada, which installed one Biba-enabled playground in May. “It’s a nice bonus for some playground equipment that we really liked.”

This fall, Biba will be working with Simon Fraser University’s department of cognitive psychology to validate one of their central premises that kids play longer, harder and more often when using Biba games on playgrounds.

The company also intends to design inclusive games for children with varying disabilities.

Advertisement

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Article content continued

“Perfect” is the enemy of … just about everything! “You will learn more about your product by getting it in front of actual users A.S.A.P. than you will polishing it in the studio. If a four-year-old says one of our playground games is boring, it is.”

Become a local where your clients are. “Vancouver is a great place to produce the work, but growing the business means being in New York, San Francisco, Malmo, Rochester or wherever. Don’t be a visitor to those places: belong. Spend consistent time in the community, build that specific network.”

Trust your partner. “Working with a large non-digital U.S. partner was a learning experience for a small Vancouver startup. When they have literally decades of industry experience, they can get you some impressive ‘at bats’ with major clients pretty quickly … so you’d better be ready.”

Share this Story: Biba: An app that creates treasure maps and obstacle courses within playgrounds

Trending

Related Stories

This Week in Flyers

Article Comments

Comments

Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. Comments may take up to an hour for moderation before appearing on the site. We ask you to keep your comments relevant and respectful. We have enabled email notifications—you will now receive an email if you receive a reply to your comment, there is an update to a comment thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information and details on how to adjust your email settings.

Notice for the Postmedia Network

This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.